This invention relates to a tamper-proof container for medicaments and the like whereby the medicaments are rendered safe from malicous adulteration as may be injurious to the consumers of the medicaments.
Recent incidents involving the injurious and indeed deadly tampering of "off-the-shelf" marketed medicaments have received wide notoriety. These incidents have resulted in the withdrawal of otherwise beneficial medicaments from the market, or changing the marketing status of these medicaments to a controlled basis thereby increasing their cost to the consumer. Manufacturers of these products have devoted large amounts of time and money to solve this insidious problem, but their efforts have so far met with less than desirable success.
Attempts have been made to provide "tamper-resistant" containers to prevent the aforenoted malicious adulteration. However, these attempts appear to have merely shifted the burden to the consumer to be extremely alert and observing so as to discern tampering indications. In short, while prior art containers purport to be tamper-resistant and/or tamper-proof, they are not as yet tamper-proof as to satisfy the need which so urgently exists.
In this regard the applicant is aware of the following prior art: U.S. Pat. No. 4,174,238 issued to Fowles, et al on Nov. 13, 1979; U.S. Pat. No. 4,426,004 issued to Hoag on Jan. 17, 1984; U.S. Pat. No. 4,445,622 issued to Sidiri on May 1, 1984; U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,636 issued to Meadows, et al on June 12, 1984; and U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,478,342, 4,478,341 and 4,478,343 issued to Slater, et al, Rangaswomy and Ostowsky, respectively, on Oct. 23, 1984.
Accordingly, it is the object of this invention to provide a virtually tamper-proof container for medicaments and the like so that the medicaments may be safely marketed, with the consumers having maximum assurance that the medicaments have not been maliciously and surreptitiously adulterated so as to cause harmful results.